


here in the present tense

by achilleees



Series: jack/parse tumblr prompts [6]
Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Bodyswap, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, M/M, Reconciliation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-11
Updated: 2016-04-11
Packaged: 2018-06-01 17:26:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,345
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6529267
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/achilleees/pseuds/achilleees
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jack isn’t really sure what he was expecting when he went to sleep on August 2.</p><p>Kind of. Or maybe he just doesn’t want to admit that he genuinely thought he’d wake up in Georgia, in those checker-patterned, sunlight-limned sheets. That he’d go downstairs and hear Suzanne Bittle bustling around in the kitchen, and greet her wearing her son’s socks and his pajamas and his sweet, bashful blush.</p><p>It’s kind of a wake-up call when he wakes up next to a naked guy instead.</p>
            </blockquote>





	here in the present tense

**Author's Note:**

> for the tumblr prompt: "jack/parse bodyswap, if you're still taking prompts. :)) one million bonus points if it's after jack starts playing for the falcs and/or there's some naked dude in bed with him and he's both jealous and worried about whether parse made him sign an nda"
> 
> i decided to combine it with a tumblr post i've read (i'll hyperlink it when i get home tonight) that reads: "I had a dream where every person, at exactly midnight on new years following their 22nd birthday, they possessed the body of their soulmate [etc]" - changed it so you wake up in your soulmate's body on your 25th, but it shares the premise.
> 
> as always, still taking jack/parse [tumblr](http://achilleees.tumblr.com/ask) prompts, though i can't promise if or when i'm filling them. i am currently working on a future-fic for jack/parse 10 years down the road, i promise, for the prompter who wanted it.
> 
> title from "one man wrecking machine" by guster which is the most jack/parse song ever and i defy you to tell me differently.
> 
> NOTE: this is endgame jack/parse but it contains jack/bitty. if either of those are dealbreakers for you, don't read it.

Jack isn’t really sure what he was expecting when he went to sleep on August 2.

Kind of. Or maybe he just doesn’t want to admit that he genuinely thought he’d wake up in Georgia, in those checker-patterned, sunlight-limned sheets. That he’d go downstairs and hear Suzanne Bittle bustling around in the kitchen, and greet her wearing her son’s socks and his pajamas and his sweet, bashful blush.

It’s kind of a wake-up call when he wakes up next to a naked guy instead.

 

 

“Hi,” Jack says, startled, when the man’s eyes blink open.

A sultry, sleepy smirk takes over his face. “And hi to you,” he says, leaning over to steal a kiss, for which Jack freezes up completely, not that he appears to notice. “Up for another round before you have to go work out?”

His soulmate has scheduled workouts to go to. That’s a good sign, right?

“I don’t think so,” Jack says, sitting up, trying not to look too visibly panicked.

The bed he’s in is enormous, plush and white, with way too many pillows. The décor of the whole place looks suspiciously like something he once saw in a profile of Tom Brady’s New York apartment, and – since he doubts his soulmate is Tom Brady, that means his soulmate is rich enough to hire an interior decorator of that peerage.

 _Man up and look in the mirror, Zimmermann_ , he tells himself, not that there’s going to be any way of avoiding it once he stands up. The thing takes up about half the available wall space, though even it is dwarfed by the floor to ceiling windows.

But he doesn’t need to, because as he starts to climb out of bed, he happens to look down at his hands, and he knows these hands.

Knows the hands, the thighs, the – frankly, unnecessarily toned – abs. When he looks up into the mirror and that notorious floppy cowlick is the first thing he sees, it’s just confirmation of what he already knows. What he’s already known for years, if he’s honest with himself.

His soulmate is Kent goddamn Parson.

 

 

 _Soulmate_. It’s a weird, nebulous term, and Jack has never really understood it, even less now than ever before. Soulmates don’t always have a sexual or romantic bond - sometimes it’s platonic, sometimes it’s just…

For example, he’s pretty sure Ransom and Holster are gonna wake up in each other’s bodies on their 25ths.

But Kent and him… Whatever bond they once had seemed to have been torn clean through by this point. Jack has Bitty, Kent has - some naked guy. They play for teams across the country, they fight every time they see each other…

Maybe once upon a time they had been soulmates, but that had been years ago and things had changed. Could the universe be obsolete? Running years out of date on faulty information? Shit, could the universe just be wrong?

 

 

“Look,” Jack says, while the guy is dressing and Jack is sitting cross-legged on Kent’s bed with a very affectionate cat in his lap. Either animals really aren’t as intuitive as the urban legends say, or this kitty’s just a cuddle-slut.  “Not to, uh - you’re not gonna say anything, right?”

The guy snorts. “I signed your NDA, didn’t I?” he says, shooting Jack an unimpressed look. “And by the way, you’re lucky I did, because I don’t even want to think about how much TMZ would pay to know you called me Jack in bed.” He sighs wistfully.

Jack wonders, in some distant corner of his mind, if he’s expected to offer the man cash, or alternately, if that would be rude. He doesn’t think the guy is actually a prostitute, but he seems to be hinting towards something like it.

The rest of his brain is wrestling his conscience about letting this guy tell the entire world that Kent still gets off calling his name in bed, and how ridiculously awesome that would be, no matter what Jack tells himself about torn bonds.

There’s some part of him that will never forget that he was Kent’s first and Kent was his, that Kent’s still the only guy who’s been inside him, the way Kent shudders with his whole body when Jack sucks on that one spot by his hip.

“Yeah,” Jack says, reaching for Kent’s wallet in the back pocket of his discarded pants and pulling out all the cash inside. He holds it out. “Lucky for me.”

The dude takes the money, so it can’t be _that_ rude.

 

 

After feeding the cat - hopefully he gets the amounts right, and it won’t kill her to eat too much or too little for the day if he didn’t - Jack grabs Kent’s laptop and sits up in bed with it. He feels too exposed in just boxer briefs, so he throws on some Aces sweats.

Password protected, duh, and being quote-unquote “soulmates” with the man doesn’t seem like enough of a bond for Jack to be able to guess it.

His phone, though - Thank god for fingerprint scanners. Jack has a feeling Kent hadn’t been thinking of this exact situation when he set it up, but he appreciates it either way.

It’s probably a breach of privacy to be breaking into his phone, but Jack has other things on his mind than his own dubious ethics at a time like this. Besides, he isn’t snooping through it the way any other soulmate might - he doesn’t need to find an address or contact information, or to go searching through his apps for any hint of interests, hobbies, indicators of his personality… He already knows all that about Parse.

Or thought he did, until he sees the icon for the Grindr app on the front screen.

He knows what Grindr is, he’s not stupid, but for some reason it’s a slap in the face to see it on Parse’s phone. He can’t actually be _meeting_ people from there - is he insane? Surely someone must recognize his profile picture, Crisse. Vegas might not be a hockey town but Kent Parson is a household name, there’s no way, he can’t be that reckless.

Jack opens the app and fumbles his way to Kent’s profile, and - Hm.

It’s not as bad as he feared, but it’s pretty fucking bad. His name is just _DL_ , and he’s listed his attributes as 24yrs; White; 5’9”; Muscular; 168lbs; Single; Right Now, Chat; Jock. Jack wonders what it means that he was more honest about his height here than he was in the Aces press guide.

The picture is of his naked torso, and it was clearly taken towards the end of his summer when he was still all bulked up, before his weight dropped over the season. Going through the app, Jack finds that it saves all of the pictures he trades with people over the message feature, and… Jesus, Parse has sent a lot of dick pics.

This is _definitely_ a breach of privacy, and Jack doesn’t have an excuse this time. Parse has dozens, hundreds of messaging threads with random Vegas guys, mostly just vapid conversation and dirty talk and trading of pictures, but once in awhile…

Once in awhile, the conversations lead to agreements to meet up, arrangements of NDAs, vows of secrecy. This only happens with men who also have DL listed in their profiles, which has to mean something, Jack assumes, though he doesn’t know what.

Crisse. Jack puts down the phone and stares at his hands, worried and jealous and pitying all at once, not really sure what he thinks. Part of him is glad that Parse isn’t hiding from himself anymore, part of him is terrified at the same thing. But that’s hypocritical - is what he’s doing with Bitty any better?

Yes. Bitty isn’t anything like this. Maybe Kent’s happy this way and maybe he’s not, but Jack wouldn’t trade situations with him for anything in the world.

He picks up the phone and dials a number that, thankfully, he knows by heart.

 

 

Bitty’s voice is uncharacteristically subdued when he answers, and Jack knows that he was hoping not to wake up until August 4 as much as Jack was. “Hello?”

“Eric,” Jack says, which still sounds weird, but less weird than Bitty or Bittle. “It’s Jack.”

“Jack?” Bitty says, tone indecipherable. “Where are you?”

Jack squeezes his eyes shut, but he realizes in a distant way that his palms don’t itch the way they would be in his own body. He’s not enjoying this conversation, for sure, but he doesn’t ache for his pills either.

He’s always known, academically, that his addictive personality is biological, that his stress and anxiety and borderline depression are symptomatic of chemical imbalances in his brain. But being here in Parse’s body and feeling none of that panic, that pressure on his chest - it’s strangely relieving. No wonder Parse has always seemed to skate through life while Jack wades through mud.

It’s going to hurt like hell to go back tomorrow.

“Vegas,” Jack says finally.

The hitch of Bitty’s breath tells him he doesn’t need to elucidate further.

“Oh my,” Bitty says. “What are you going to…?”

“I’m not - nothing changes,” Jack says. “I already knew Kent and I have chemistry. That doesn’t mean we’re compatible anymore. The universe is wrong.”

“The universe isn’t wrong,” Bitty says, but his voice is gentle. “Just because you have a… tangled history doesn’t mean you aren’t soulmates.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Jack says. “I’m not rewriting my life for him. The universe gives me a signal, that doesn’t mean I have to follow it.” He’s angry, he realizes, and maybe that’s part of Kent’s brain chemistry too.

“Okay,” Bitty says. “Okay.” He hesitates. “Are you going to leave a note?”

“No,” Jack says, because he has no idea what it would say. _Joke of the universe, Parse. Have I got news for you_.

Bitty doesn’t say anything.

“He’s going to know it’s me anyway,” Jack says. “When he wakes up tomorrow - he knows my birthday and he’s not stupid.”

“Then not leaving a note is as much a statement as leaving one would be,” Bitty points out.

Jack curses under his breath and cards a hand through his hair, which is softer and finer and floppier than he’s used to. “What would I say? He knows who I am. He has my number.” The years-old messages clogging up his voicemail attest to that.

“I don’t know,” Bitty says, losing steam.

Jack picks at his cuticles, then takes a closer look at his hands. He’d put 10 to 1 odds that Parse gets manicures. Crisse. “You hate Parse,” he points out. “Why are you trying to help him?”

“I don’t hate him,” Bitty says, to which Jack snorts. “I don’t! I just think he’s not good for your mental health.”

“Very true,” Jack says.

“But… I don’t know, maybe I underestimated the connection you two have,” Bitty says. “Maybe I wanted to think that chapter of your life was closed, but… the person you were with Kent…” He blows out a heavy breath. “That boy is still you. I can’t pretend otherwise.”

 

 

Kent’s apartment is fucking swanky, which is a problem, as Jack realizes when he gets back from his run and finds himself locked out. The key, it turns out, is for the elevator, which only takes him up to Kent’s penthouse when he figures out after ages of poking around that he has to unlock the floor. But the door to Kent’s apartment is unlocked by a keycode, and again, Jack’s got nothing.

Kent’s birthday doesn’t work, and neither does Jack’s, which he tries even though he feels stupid and conceited about it. He’s worried that it will activate some burglar alarm if he keeps trying, so he’s standing in the hallway, staring at the door, when the elevator opens behind him.

“Bro,” he hears, and someone claps his shoulder. “Wanna talk?”

Jack turns, eyebrows raising when he finds himself at eye level with a pair of Ray-Ban’s hooked in the collar of a Motley Crue t-shirt. “Uh,” he says.

“I know getting blitzed and drunk-dialing me is your SOP for this shit, but it’s too nice a day for that and I’m already here, so let’s just skip that step, yeah?” Mosh says, because that’s who it turns out to be - JR Moses, the best defenseman on the Aces and Ransom’s second favorite NHL player.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Jack says truthfully.

“Why must we go through this every time?” Mosh says, rolling his eyes. “ _But Mosh, seriously, I’m over him, I don’t care that it’s his birthday and he’s probs eating homemade cake in Florida with his boy-toy’s mom_ \- _But Parse, you’re full of shit and we both know it so cut the crap_ \- _But Mosh, it doesn’t matter because he’s over me and I need to get over him and uuuuuugh I just want to play beautiful hockey with him all day and ride him like a goddamn stallion all night_ \- _Ew, Parse, please stop filling my brain with that image_ … There we go, took care of the first stage, you’re welcome.”

Jack stares at him.

“So let’s just go inside so I can save you from your dreary den of loneliness and depravity - shit, is there a word for loneliness that starts with a d? Anyway,” Mosh says, and checks him into the door. “I want that fancy lemonade you hide in the back of your fridge, you owe me. Hurry up.”

Jack looks at the door. There’s a long, still moment.

“Dude,” Mosh says, then his jaw snaps shut with an audible click. “Wait.”

Jack winces.

“Wait,” Mosh says again. “Zimmermann?”

“Hey,” Jack says weakly.

“I _knew_ it,” Mosh says, bouncing on his heels with excitement. It’s pretty adorable, not unlike Holster’s excited shimmy. “I told him not to take that dude home last night - sorry about that, must have been awks, but I so totally knew it. Code’s 5225, man.”

Jack keys in the code and the light flashes green. He lets them both in.

“Bro!” Mosh says. “So what happens now? He’s already told me you suck at gestures, but I can help, I know exactly what KP thinks is romantic - he’s such a sap, it’s ridic.”

Jack’s stomach hurts and his palms itch and he knows he can’t blame it on anxiety. “I don’t -” he starts, then runs out of words.

He can see the moment recognition strikes Mosh, all that easy happiness draining from his face. “You’re not going to…”

Jack shakes his head.

“Fuck you,” Mosh says, in a way that tells Jack he’s getting checked _hard_ the first time he plays the Aces. “You’re just leaving him like this? _Fuck_ you.”

Jack stares mutinously at the floor. He could try to defend himself, but everything sounds like a lie even in his head. _His feelings are not my responsibility_ and _I don’t owe him anything_ and _I don’t love him back_.

Jesus, he doesn’t know what he feels. “I have a boyfriend,” is what he ends up saying.

Mosh goes quiet, so it must have been the right thing to say. “Shit,” he says finally. “Man, he’s so fucked up over you.”

It’s so stupid, but Jack really hadn’t known. Kent’s always kept his feelings close to the chest, and combine that with the way he lashes out when he’s defensive and Jack has never been able to read how he really feels.

Maybe he didn’t actually want to know.

“I’m sorry,” is all Jack can think to say.

“Shit,” Mosh says again.

 

 

He spends the rest of his day in a kind of fog, wandering around Parse’s apartment touching all his things. His clothes - he still wears black boxer briefs exclusively, though they’ve upgraded from Hanes to Armani. His cat, affectionate and cuddly in a way that Kent never has been, though the way she climbs into his lap as if it’s inarguably her domain tells him this impression might be outdated at best, incorrect at worst. The framed Rimouski jersey stuffed away in the back of his huge walk-in closet. The collection of terrible floral snapbacks arranged on top of his dresser.

He doesn’t have the self-control not to open Parse’s email and look into his drafts folder, but to his credit, he only reads the “(no subject) Zimms -” preview on all of them before putting Parse’s phone away.

He eats the prepared lunch in Kent’s fridge, the pre-portioned packet of spice that he sprinkles over the vacuum-sealed salmon after baking it for the 8 minutes specified on the instruction label. He works out, and envies Kent some more, because Jack’s always had stamina but Kent has grace, and he moves like a gazelle while Jack’s more of a bull.

After he showers, he stands at the bathroom mirror and looks at himself for a long time. People always thought that Kent was the more expressive one between them, but Jack knew the truth, glaringly apparent as he meets those grey eyes in the mirror.

Jack’s reserved, but he’s an open book. When he feels something, it comes across loud and clear.

But Parse, he’s blank. Sure, maybe he’s expressive, but only of the emotion he wants to convey. His face is a mask.

And Jack’s the idiot who actually believed it.

 

 

In bed that night, Jack tosses and turns so much that Kit hisses and leaves to go find a more restful spot to sleep, which makes Jack feel stupidly guilty, compounding with the guilt he already feels for the way Kent’s going to feel in the morning and the way Kent must have felt when his NHL app alerted him that Jack signed with Providence and the way he hasn’t thought about Bitty nearly enough since their phone call that morning.

Finally, he climbs out of bed and digs through every drawer in the apartment, unsuccessfully looking for a pen - how does Kent not have a single goddamn pen in his entire apartment? He ends up writing with a bar of soap on the bathroom mirror, feeling ridiculous as he does, _I’ll call you, I promise_.

He’s turning to leave when he sees the black bag peeking out of the open medicine cabinet, and it stops him cold. He recognizes that bag.

It used to hold extra Ativan, in case Jack ran out, along with a glass bowl, a lighter, eye drops, throat lozenges, and for a brief period when the team was slumping and Jack was hitting his meds even harder than usual, a baggie of white powder.

Jack swallows, throat dry, wondering what’s in the bag now.

To his credit, he doesn’t look.

 

 

In the morning, he wakes up in his own body and hates the way his hands shake as he reaches for his daily dose of Lexapro.

He’ll call Kent, he promises himself. Just not yet.

 

 

It’s not really a surprise when Bitty surprises him at his Providence apartment three days later with a maple sugar crusted apple pie and a sad look on his face.

“Look, Jack,” he says, hands folded over the counter, giving him those goddamn Bambi eyes that make Jack’s insides melt every time.

This time they just make him ache.

Jack doesn’t say anything. He distantly notices that his hands are shaking as he takes out a knife and starts to cut into the pie.

Bitty’s face twitches a little at the way he cuts - straight lines through the full diameter instead of slice by slice - and he’s clearly restraining himself from reaching out to take the knife and do it himself.

Jack points the knife at him. “I’m the one getting dumped,” he says sternly. “I get to serve it.”

“Point taken,” Bitty says, laughing softly, gently, sadly. “I just -”

“If this is about Parse, it’s dumb,” Jack says - though deep down, he’s not sure that’s true. He dreamed about Parse’s hands last night. He didn’t even feel that guilty when he woke up, and not for any of the right reasons. “The universe doesn’t get to choose for me, I do.”

“It’s not about Kent,” Bitty says. “Not the way you’re thinking.” He chews at his lip. “It’s just… It forced me to think about some things that I’ve been avoiding. And there’s a reason the universe wants you to be with Parse instead of me.”

That’s not - “That’s not -”

“Or - whatever,” Bitty says, raising a hand to halt Jack. The interruption is uncharacteristically rude, and Jack falls silent, recognizing that this is something Bitty needs to say. “He’s more suited to your lifestyle than I am. You know it as well as I do.”

“I can make this work,” Jack insists, because he told himself that on the day of his graduation and he believes it, he won’t let himself believe any other way.

“I’m not just doing this for your sake, Jack,” Bitty says. “I can’t always be your dirty little secret. You know? And I don’t always want to be worried about accidentally outing you.” His eyes well up, shiny and bright.

He presses his lips together for a long moment, trying to center himself. “Jack,” he says, reaching over and putting his hand over Jack’s. “My Grindr profile wouldn’t have DL on it.”

Jack stares at him.

“Down low,” Bitty supplies, sighing at his cluelessness. “Do you get what I’m saying?”

“Yeah,” Jack says, because he does, and he doesn’t have a defense against this one. “I do.”

 

  
Jack doesn’t end up calling Kent, but he forgives himself for it because he flies out to Vegas instead during the lull after practice camp before the preseason starts. He finds Kent’s apartment easily before realizing the difficulty of surprising someone whose elevator requires a key to work.

Mosh would not approve of his failure at romantic gestures, he thinks, and calls Kent.

“Jack?” Kent says, a little wary, but he picks up on the first ring, so. That’s something. “Hey.”

“Call up your stupid elevator,” Jack grumbles.

“What the what,” Kent says. There’s movement on his end, and a moment later, the elevator hums to life, carrying him up to the penthouse. Jack takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly as he pockets his phone.

Kent is leaning against the jamb of his open door, face perfectly blank, when the elevator opens. “Yo,” he says. “C’mon in.”

Jack follows him inside and takes a seat on the couch. It turns out Kit’s a lot less cuddly when he’s not in Kent’s body, and she eyes him warily from her perch on a little cushion on a shelf of the massive entertainment unit.

“Get you something to drink?” Kent asks.

Jack runs his tongue over his top row of teeth, thinking. “You have that fancy lemonade you hide in the back of your fridge?”

“Yeah, I - holy shit,” Kent says with dawning dread. “You talked to Mosh.”

Jack nods.

“Oh, Jesus,” Kent says, sitting down hard on the opposite side of the couch. “He’s a shithead, you should ignore him. He thinks he needs to look out for me.”

“You think I’m here to let you down easy?” Jack asks - not really a question, though.

Kent raises his eyebrows, all _duh, bro_.

“I don’t think I would have flown here for that,” Jack muses aloud. “Doesn’t sound like me.”

“True,” Kent says slowly. “So…?” He narrows his eyes. “Does your boyfriend know you’re here?”

“Yes, and he’s not my boyfriend,” Jack says.

Kent takes a moment to absorb this. “Because of me?” he says.

“No,” Jack says immediately, because it’s not. Because Bitty’s not that shallow, nor that insecure. “Because I can’t be what he needs, or - he can’t be what I need, maybe.”

“They’re not exclusive,” Kent points out. He goes to the fridge and pulls out the bottle of fancy lemonade, taking his time pouring out two glasses. When he comes back, his face is more mask-like than ever. “So you thought - Kent’s a slut and a sure thing, I’ll go rebound with him.”

Despite himself, Jack laughs. “Jesus, you don’t even believe that yourself. Have you met me?”

“True,” Kent admits, laughing as well. “You’re gonna have to clue me in, then.” He gives an abortive shrug. “‘Cause man, I’m not getting it.”

Jack’s bad at this part. Feeling things, sure, he’s a pro at that. Expressing them is _terrible_ though. He has an easier time with declarative statements, even though it makes him sound like even more of a hockey-bot than normal.

“I woke up in your bed,” he says slowly, “and there was a naked guy next to me, and that bothered me. And I found your Grindr, and that bothered me too.”

Kent raises his eyebrows.

“And I’m not ready to -” Jack says, because he still misses the smell of oatmeal cookies and coconut shampoo filling the air in his apartment, “but if you’re still working on getting over me, I’d say _don’t_. Is it fair for me to ask you for that?”

Kent stares at him. His face is blank, but once upon a time Jack knew how to read it anyway, and he’s willing to bet he could learn again.

If Kent wanted him to. Kent’s taking a long time to answer and Jack’s actually a little nervous, even though Kent’s the one who just called himself a sure thing. Jack curls his hand into a fist next to his thigh where he can’t see.

Kent pulls out his phone and fumbles around on it for a moment before passing it to Jack. Jack can’t figure out what he’s supposed to be looking at until he sees the empty space in the corner where the Grindr app used to be.

“But you can’t take forever,” Kent says. “That’s my answer.”

“Deal,” Jack says, feeling a little giddy, lightheaded.

He’s pretty sure Kent’s going to be waking up next to his own unconscious body in eleven months, which is a little unsettling, but there are worse things.


End file.
